In the late 1990s, Cluj-Napoca, Romania’s second biggest city and the unofficial capital of Transylvania, was, to put it mildly, a slum.
Infrastructure was poor, foreign investment was nowhere to be seen and the communist legacy still had deep roots, a big obstacle in developing a healthy entrepreneurial culture.
Twenty years later and Cluj is the city with the third-highest GDP growth (at 120%) in the EU, according to Eurostat, beating even Tallinn and Vilnius.
It’s still early days for the startup scene — in 2021, startups in Cluj attracted $11.3m in investment, compared to $2.3m in 2020 — but many are gaining international…
